what makes a good gift?

i like fancy things as much as the next girl, but when it comes to gifts, i'll take the homemade mix tape or the hand-knit homage-to-delaware potholder any day. i like the thoughtful ones.

and speaking of hand-knit homage-to-delaware potholders...


thanks, jess. it's beautiful.

macaroni and cheese

brrrrrr

i want to wear great big warm fluffy things.

i suppose that can be arranged.

i am full up to here

with two separate dinners in one night. with veggie omelettes and thai barbequed pizza and wine and spinach dip. with meetings and site visits and group work. houseguests and reunions and goodbyes and a giant empty house all to myself (for the moment). with transit-oriented development and physical planning. illustrator and maps and specific and general plans. with my dying tooth. with historic preservation and neighborhoods in transition. clothes and photographs and confusing boys. with macaroni and cheese. with cleaning and lost and bowling and appointments and south central and pasadena and prefab housing and marketing and communications and negotiations and summer jobs. i could go on...

but i guess i asked for it.

proper utensils

from an exhibit at the cooper-hewitt.

they seem to have forgotten the appropriate utensil for that last food, though...

jane jacobs died today

it's hard to be sad about the passing of someone who led such a full life, and who affected the lives of so many people.

let's just say that i'm glad she was born.

she may be a cynic

but julie takes beautiful photoraphs.

julie says that i am too quick to give people the benefit of the doubt

that is, i tend to believe the best of people, unless i'm proven wrong. i like to call it optimism, although i suppose it could also be classified as naivete.

i don't think this is a problem. sure, sometimes i'm wrong and that sucks. but every time i'm right i am filled with wonder - like the world i want to live in might actually exist. i think it's worth it.

i found myself at a party tonight

telling a 24 year old a&r scout how he has to listen to more oldies.

i would end the story there, with "oh the irony," but the truth is, he asked for my email address so we could exchange music. and for a moment i realized: maybe i am a bit too cynical.

i forgot to get the gas turned back on

i've been in exile from venice for the past few days, as my house was being fumigated. yes, the tent and everything. i got back in yesterday, tested the gas (which seemed to work), and commenced unpacking. it wasn't until i got in the shower that i realized something was off. it was lukewarm. oh well, i figured. maybe the water heater takes a bit to warm up. then i checked some clothes in the dryer. still wet. hmmmmm. i went downstairs to check the stove. no dice. cold showers and wet clothes it is, then.

this also threw a wrench in my dinner plans - no oven, no stove. necessity can be the mother of invention, though, and we patched together a toaster oven supper of croque monsieurs, salad, and roasted peaches with brown sugar and basil, paired with port. yum.

lemons into lemonade, and all that.

just so you all know, we're doing it on purpose

an excerpt from my marketing readings:

no more hiding. just as everything is becoming branded, so will everything - you, your business, and every part of your products - become a form of communication. communications will be ubiquitous, and they will all be linked to the brand.

passing afternoon

on monday i went down to the beach to do some work (and fortunately by do some work i mean sketch). it was sunny and blustery and i could barely keep my papers down. my ipod was set to shuffle and this song came on. like so much iron and wine, its sad and beautiful and bittersweet. it was so windy that i was forced to take shelter. the only places without wind, however, were also the ones without sun. i got cold so i went inside.

i woke up this morning and that song was playing on repeat inside my head. i don't know if it was still there from monday or if it was playing in my dreams.

moules frites

so tasty.

it's been too long without music

apart - gypsophile

merge (dntel) - grizzly bear

mittens

handsome boy.

confusion

there are so many thoughts stuck my head.

it's like they are all cramped up in there and have no place to go, so they just mill around all day and gossip and talk about me behind my back.

black on black on black on black

i seem to be wearing a lot of black these days. today, for instance, i found myself wearing a black scarf with a black jacket over a black shirt over a black tank top.

thank god for colorful shoes, eh?

some of my favorite recent spammers

Separately Q. Aristocrats
Mitten J. Parent
Byte A. Moodier
Michael F. Colloquialism
Handedness C. Sleeted
Stewing S. Chamber
Swedenborg I. Forlornest
Amplification D. Prescott
Prohibitions V. Wantoner
Percussionists D. Sticki

although these are in no specific order, i'd have to say that mitten j. parent holds a special place in my heart.

i love the name mitten(s).

"We called for a labor force, but it was human beings that came."

-max frisch

i don't really know where to begin with this. i don't understand the people, the children and grandchildren of immigrants, who want to cast undocumented workers as criminals.

is it the color of their skin that's the problem?

is it so easy to forget where we came from?

it's not an us/them situation. it's just us. we're all just us.

somewhere up there

do you see it?

life on mars - seu jorge

it's a steel! (oh yes i did)

the lustron house, comprised completely of steel, was one of the original prefab houses. designed by carl strandlund in 1947, they enjoyed brief popularity before the lustron corporation went bankrupt amid poor sales and scandal (but we won't get into that here). the point of this post is that the biggest concentration of lustron homes still in existence are being given away - that's right, given away - by the marine corps base at quantico.

you can apply for one here. you just have to figure out how to dismantle, transport, and reassemble the house. oh, and the due date is april 12th.

i would but, well, i've got all the house i can handle right about now.

the centre pompidou is one of my favorite places in the world, for many reasons. here's one:


the concrete plaza seems so simple, so bare, and yet it's constantly populated by people.


people sitting, people standing, talking or just lying around.


clustered in groups, couples, or on their own.


it's just an expanse of grey concrete, like any other. and yet it pulses with a life of its own.


what magic is this?

it has long since been determined that i am a clumsy, clumsy girl. i bump into things. i fall down. i knock things over. and yet, in certain situations, my reflexes are amazingly fast. throw something at me when i'm not looking, and chances are that i'll catch it. drop something in front of me and i'll save it before it hits the ground.

like a jungle cat, i am. a clumsy, clumsy jungle cat.

rawr.

my father read me a poem tonight

venice poem

the city itself, what it
is, a
city of walking at nite
city of old and ugly houses
city of real pain and real children
city of open sores and open eyes
city of doom and terror
city of ocean and animal lust
city of dying and struggle
city of Venice, my city, city within a city I do not
know or love

...

what a city is/
a vision, a
holy eye, a
structure

what a city is/
a face, a face of
love, of the place, the real
place...
yes, there is a king of
knowing, it can be called
love

stuart z perkoff

homework

one of my studio classes this quarter has 'boyz N the hood,' 'friday' and 'rize' listed as recommended background material in the syllabus.

sweet.

more

Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together.

If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.

My stories run up and bite me on the leg-I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.

Touch a scientist and you touch a child.

rb

he loves dinosaurs

i saw ray bradbury speak last night. he said that life is about love. when you find the things you love you must take them and run, and apologize to no one. the world can be yours.

he said the internet talks too much.

"life's too short to live in anyone's box, especially if that box is constraining your shine."

dj shadow gets freaky on new album

hokay

3 freaks

i waited all morning for the rain to let up so that i could leave the house, but the grey just persisted. so i bundled up warmly, cuffed my jeans, fetched my umbrella and ventured into the thick of it. i had to get out of the house. it was raining hard but warmer than i expected when this song came on my ipod and just for a moment everything was gentle around me.

i accidently scratched a mole off my back

i've had it forever. and now its just a scar.

by request

i hope you're well, i am and i send you my fingers - my name is nobody

last night i dreamt three times - my name is nobody

there's something sweet about his voice...it reminds me of erlend oye or someone else who's native tongue is not english. anyway, i think sweet is a good way to descibe the album. not genius, but not bad for being bought on a drunken whim. and he does have a way with words.

la défense

field

secret agents

the metro goes above ground

tamara

gas station bathroom...belgium?

antwerp

the tuileries

scratching an itch

this song has been stuck in my head for 10 days.

got your money - odb feat. kelis

i am full up to here

with two separate dinners in one night. with veggie omelettes and thai barbequed pizza and wine and spinach dip. with meetings and site visits and group work. houseguests and reunions and goodbyes and a giant empty house all to myself (for the moment). with transit-oriented development and physical planning. illustrator and maps and specific and general plans. with my dying tooth. with historic preservation and neighborhoods in transition. clothes and photographs and confusing boys. with macaroni and cheese. with cleaning and lost and bowling and appointments and south central and pasadena and prefab housing and marketing and communications and negotiations and summer jobs. i could go on...

but i guess i asked for it.

every time i go away

returning feels a little more like coming home.